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Two men were walking into the opening session of the recently held OSIsoft user conference. One turned to the other and said, "He's supposed to spend his time solving problems, not building spreadsheets."
Inadvertently or not, these gentlemen had homed in on not just one of the conference's themes, but of OSIsoft's mission as vendor of the PI System data historian, which collects data from heterogeneous systems and places it in a context meaningful for decision makers.
With the second gentleman nodding in agreement, the two were giving witness to a well-known fact: The most commonly used decision-support tool in virtually all functional areas of the manufacturing enterprise remains the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. It attained this lofty stature despite its recognized limitations as a means to integration and collaboration.
New capabilities from Microsoft and OSIsoft allow engineers and managers to keep their spreadsheets, but rigorously managed in a shared environment and supported by tools that will allow, hopefully, overly detail-oriented managers to avoid pointed criticism.
More important, though, is knowing that the term "data historian" doesn't do justice to the pervasive role such systems are poised to play in today's most dynamic industries, nor does it hint at the big part these systems will have in initiatives ranging from demand-driven manufacturing to plant energy management. (For more on Excel use, see OSIsoft brings elements of Microsoft Business apps into PI System ).
With this expanding role for data historians in mind, some have suggested that today's most advanced systems are better referred to as "enterprise historians."
The PI System data historian helps Microsoft manage energy use in the midst of a massive buildup of its data centers, needed to furnish Internet services to consumer customers. Eastman Kodak uses it to manage processes and reduce energy costs at The Kodak Park, its Rochester, N.Y.-based "city within a city." And PI System is the corporate standard for data historians at bio-tech manufacturer Amgen 's six production plants.
Some distinctions made
Since at least early 2005, Alison Smith and Colin Masson of AMR Research have been calling attention to the big role data historians will play in an era where multi-plant global operations are increasingly common.
According to AMR, data historians originated as special-purpose data repositories for environments...